It’s the last day of the month, so once again it’s time to share mine & Henri’s year-long challenge of doing one page from Moriah Elizabeth‘s Create This Book (vol 1) each month. There’s a link to all past posts at the bottom of this post. For this month Jakob decided to pick for us, and picked the “unusual combo” theme on page 35.

Henri loves food, so it was no surprise at all that he used foods in yet another page in this book.

He decided to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the Cronut and Krispy Kreme hamburger, and created a donut made out of pizza. Not gonna lie – I’d eat it.

For my own post, for some reason I kept thinking about pompoms. (The fact that I was literally surrounded by yarn while working up samples for my mask lanyards probably has something to do with that). The first “odd combo” that came to mind was a lamp made from pompoms, so I ran with it… even though it’s not all that crazy and is probably already a product that exists for sale.

I started with a quick pencil sketch, then loosely blocked in where the pompoms would go.

Then I went over the design with a 01 Micron fineliner, drawing in every little line of fluff.

Once the outline was in, I colored in the page with my Marco Raffiné colored pencils.

They’re oil-based pencils (as opposed to wax-based like Prismacolor Premieres), and have a harder core than the also oil-based Faber-Castell Polychromos, which make them great for holding sharp points.

They’ve got a lovely pigmentation but I find they often appear “softer” than Polys, as if the colors are more muted, or desaturated. I still love them, however, and they work beautifully on the paper in this book.

The soft color worked great with the pastel look I had in mind, in any case, and it didn’t require much pressure to apply color to the page.

Complete list of 2020 Create This Book Challenge pages:

• January – page 163 “Create an Empty Setting“
• February – page 208 “Decorate This Page With Food”
• March – pages 206-207 “Create a Different Drawing”
• April – pages 22-23 “Create Folds”
• May – page 47 “Bumpy Texture”
• June – page 39 “Create Quick Sketches”
• July – page 99 “Create an Advertisement”
• August – page 35 “Create an Unusual Combo” – this post
• September – page 88 “Create a Shared Drawing”
• October – page 175 “Create a Page for Your Favorite Character”
• November – page 185 “Create a Combo”
• December – pages 52-53 “Create with Wax”

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